P is for Peonage

I regularly check http://mensrightsblogs.com/feeds/ to see what's going on in the MRA/MGTOW blogosphere...and today I found a VERY interesting post from the anti-misandry forum by one member who goes by the moniker, Luke Skywalker:

I've found a website that might be the answer to a lot of our troubles. I wish I had found it sooner, because it is so, so true what it says on this website. www.antipeonage.0catch.com
It turns out that in the USA there is an old 1867 law from the post-Civil-War era which outlaws peonage {see for yourself: § 1581. Peonage; obstructing enforcement - HL} (and therefore outlaws child support!) This law is still on the books, and a man named Robert Knight has been attempting to use this law to fight having to pay child support for a number of years now. It is called the 1867 Antipeonage Act, and it declares all conditions of peonage, whether done by the government or anyone else, to be null and void, and holding another in a state of peonage to be a crime.

Peonage is where a debtor is bound to servitude until the debt is paid off. Which is exactly what child support is. It is where the debtor (non-custodial parent) has to work to make a certain amount of money and give it custodial parent, and if he doesn't do that, he will be thrown in jail and held there indefinately. That is the textbook definition of peonage.

We often refer to unfair child support laws as the malicious reduction of the role of Fatherhood to nothing more than becoming a wage slave. This is peonage, plain and simple... and surprise, surprise, it is ALREADY illegal!

Looking further into Robert Knight's website, he states that when he has raised the issue of Peonage with the Child Support agency he is waging his battle on,this is their justification:

They tell you that they are operating under a "federal mandate". That would be Title IV-D of the Social Security Act, 42 U.S.C. §§ 651-669b. It is not and Constitutionally cannot be a mandate. What it is, is a program where Congress purchases sovereignty over issues of family law and public assistance policy from the States for a bag of federal money. Now where does the federal government gets its money? From the same place the States get their tax money, YOU!!!!

But the Supreme Court found, in Blessing v. Freestone, (1997) 520 U.S. 329, 343-344, 137 L. Ed. 2d. 569, 117 S. Ct. 1353, that the States merely contract with the federal government to impose and enforce child support laws in a certain way to qualify for federal funds. Any State may choose not to participate, and not accept the federal funds, it's NOT a mandate! That is found in Printz v. United States, (1997) 521 U.S. 898, 138 L. Ed. 2d. 914, 117 S. Ct. 2365.

It is like when you are offered a job. If you turn it down, you won't get paid. But you have the Constitutional right, 13th Amendment, to turn it down. Which is precisely what I'm fighting for.

Because the States all sell their sovereignty for the federal funds, even SOUTHERN States, former Confederate States, they practice the institution that the Confederacy fought to preserve, slavery. The duty to support the children is the excuse, but slavery it is.

Luke Skywalker offers the following tactical advice to spread the word about this...

Every single dad who has to pay child support in the US should do what this guy says to do and not pay it, and then when they take you to jail, then sue them under 42 U.S.C. §1994, which is the law which says that peonage is abolished.

If every dad in the USA who is paying child support sues under the antipeonage law, 42 U.S.C. §1994, which they have every right to do, this madness will stop. Because sooner or later there's going to be a judge and a jury out there that will listen, and when they do, it's going to make headlines.

While such a tactic may possibly work if a majority of non-custodial Fathers were to do so, I think the result would compel the feminist lobbyists simply appeal to their stooges int he government to repeal the anti-peonage law under the guise of "it's for the children."

Nevertheless, it would be quite interesting to see this issue attain mainstream awareness. My pessimism is merely the cynicism I've developed after observing the injustices of the United States of Matriarchal America.